High end reprographic and electronic imaging systems generally include an image output terminal (IOT) providing documents to one or more document finishing devices (DFDs) and/or one or more external finishing devices (EFDs). In such systems, the IOT generally controls the scheduling and flow of documents to the DFDs and/or EFDs. For such systems, the timing between successive sheets, whether of the same document or successive documents, is measured in pitches where a pitch is the standard time between the trailing edge of a sheet and the trailing edge of a next sheet.
Such high end reprographic and electronic imaging systems generally communicate via an interface such as, for example, Xerox's Document Finishing Architecture (DFA) as described in “Document Feeding & Finishing Standards DFA Level 1—Generic Specification”, version 2.0.1, February, 1997, hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. Xerox's DFA interface is a high level set of Xerox specifications for implementing the hardware and software interconnections between DFA compliant finishing and feeding devices, including DFDs and EFDs, and Xerox high-end electronic imaging and reprographic devices. The DFA interface specification is designed to be general enough to accommodate devices with different performance capabilities and specific enough to enable physical interconnection without significant hardware and software changes.
For some finishing equipment, pamphlet and book binding process time can require a large amount of actual time when compared to the time for the imaging or reprographic system to produce the documents that comprise the set. For example, one type of tape binder requires 26 seconds to complete the binding of a book and another type of auto binder requires 10 seconds to complete the binding of a book regardless of the size of the book. Systems including such binding devices operate with varying levels of productivity depending of the number of binding devices installed, the number of sheets per book (e.g., 2 to 102), the number of images per sheet (simplex or duplex), and the printer speed.
Under current hardcopy output delivery conditions, the document delivery mode from the IOT, which can be as high as 144 pages per minute (ppm) in some current systems, can be too fast for various finishing devices such as binders. For example, in a system printing pamphlets, if the bind time is 26 seconds, the printing system is required to pause printing between each pamphlet to wait for the binding process to be completed before continuing.